Nest Building
by Socrates7727
Summary: Written for the IWSC Summer Camp! Rebuilding after the war, golden trio plus Draco! HPDM if you squint.


AN I don't own HP or any of the characters! Written for IWSC Summer Camp!

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Story Title: Nest Building

Week Two: Fort Building - build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.

Prompt: Write about the golden trio trying to rebuild the Magical world after the Battle of Hogwarts (100 points)

Word Count: 1888

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If you find a baby bird, you can't touch it—not even if it's wounded. Because, if you do, it won't smell right anymore and the mother bird won't take it back, even if you bring it to her. She'll abandon it—reject it—because she won't see it as her own anymore. Harry had heard that myth a hundred times growing up, both because he liked to save things and because Dudley liked to tinker with and torture anything he could get his hands on. _Don't ever, ever touch it._

Everyone around him seemed like baby birds now. They'd all been touched by darkness, tainted somehow if only for a second, and none of their families seemed to want them back. On the surface they comforted and coddled, of course, but deep down there was always some kind of distance.

Hermione had Obliviated her family years ago, so there was no point going back to them. She wasn't their daughter anymore, and they weren't her parents. The Dursleys still hated him, of course, and had made it clear that he was not encouraged to visit or call now that he was old enough to live on his own. They'd abandoned him and cut him off as soon as possible. Harry had never really felt like they were his family, but the isolation still stung a bit.

Ron had gone back to the Burrow, along with what was left of the Weasley family. The house still bustled and thrummed with life, but it no longer felt connected the way it had when Harry had first met them. Now, it was as if their separate types of chaos ran parallel, occupying the same house but never touching. Harry didn't feel any more at home there than he did with his schoolmates.

They'd all run into each other at some point or another, especially during the summer rebuilding session at Hogwarts, but no one seemed to have escaped that tainted touch. Luna could never forgive her father, and was alone. She acted like she was fine with it, but Harry knew there were things that she missed about having a family. Neville's grandmother had died a few months back—happy and well loved, but old nevertheless. His parents were still hospitalized. Even those with the closest families imaginable, like Malfoy, now kept to themselves and seemed constantly disconnected from their loved ones.

Harry didn't know everyone he saw, even if he recognized them as classmates or schoolmates, but he could recognize them usually by that look. The baby bird look, was what he called it. It hit everyone in different ways but the result was relatively the same: a bunch of traumatized little fledglings who never should have been pushed from the nest. They were the ones who had fought in a war, as children, and they were the ones who'd survived. No one, not even their closest family and friends, could ever understand that.

So, they were left with each other.

At seventeen, there weren't many people who were jumping at the chance to take any of them seriously. They were survivors, and they were heroes, but they were still just kids. What did they know about laws or about prejudices? It wasn't as if they were the ones who had faced down Death Eaters' wands, or had defeated Voldemort and his army.

Harry had plenty of respect and gratitude for the Ministry officials and Aurors who had actually been there during the final battle, or who had put themselves on the line in other battles in lesser known conflicts. Many people had given themselves to the war, and not all by fighting. The healers who tended to the wounded, the cemetery workers who now had five times their usual workload, the families who had hidden fugitives, the shopkeepers who had fed the orphans… Almost everyone, it seemed, had taken action in some way. And, every day, Harry was reminded of those who had given their lives in the fight against Voldemort.

He took issue, however, with those who had watched from inside secure bunkers and now preached that they could lead the country. People like the Minister of Magic, or the Heads of different departments who had deemed their lives too precious to risk, no matter who was being attacked. Even Death Eaters, in his opinion, were better because they had at least chosen a side. The wrong side, of course, but still better than apathy.

Fudge had never even issued a statement denouncing Voldemort or his followers.

Even now, Harry silently raged against that careless inactivity. He was furious to learn that, despite defeating the Dark Lord, people still looked at him like some kind of novelty in a shop window. They were full of questions about the war, about his parents, and about his love life. But not one reporter wanted to hear his opinion on things like gay rights or working conditions because he was seventeen—so what did he know?

He, Ron, and Hermione were all quietly drowning in the helplessness of being children. No one cared that they had lived on the run, that they had found and destroyed the Horcruxes, or that they had been on the frontlines during the war. They were seventeen, and that made them children in the eyes of the public.

Shockingly enough, Malfoy had been their saving grace. His father had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to life in Azkaban, while his mother received merely a lifetime of house arrest. He stayed out of the public eye but, thanks to Harry's testimony at his trial, had stayed out of prison as well. The first time he showed any gratitude, though, Harry hadn't known what to make of it.

Because he, Ron, and Hermione were war heroes. Draco was a victim, if not a villain, and they should have been better off than him in their postwar society, even Harry knew that. But Draco was rich, and the blond had spent his entire life training for diplomacy and bureaucratic bullshit. He had friends in high places, and he was a Slytherin through and through.

The first favor had been for Harry. A bill—nothing special—regarding the handling of child abuse cases by Aurors and by the Wizengamot. No one had even known about it, because Harry had refused to put his name on it, and it had been doomed before it even hit the Court floor. Then, to everyone's utter shock, it had passed with over ninety eight percent of the votes. And, it had remained anonymous.

It had taken Harry a very long time to figure out who had masterminded that entire political charade, and why. He'd finally gotten Malfoy's name from a drunken Chairmember. Upon further investigation—and confrontation—Harry had learned about the influence Malfoy carried and the power he held. No one cared that he was seventeen, barely two months older than Harry. Because, in him, people saw his father and no one was stupid enough to dismiss Lucius Malfoy, or any of his money.

The second favor had been for Hermione, and had taken considerably longer. They'd kept both Ron and Hermione out of the loop, for the meantime, but Draco had allowed him to help orchestrate this particular plot. It took four months, but they'd created a subdivision within the Department of Magical Creatures devoted entirely to Magical Rights and they'd rigged an election to make Hermione the Head. Harry had been hesitant about the election rigging, until he'd seen the look on people's faces when they spoke about choosing a seventeen year old girl. That was all they saw when they looked at Hermione.

For Ron, it had been even harder. Draco had spent hundreds of thousands of galleons in bribe money and on fancy meetings but the day had come that he'd approached Harry with a small envelope. An invitation, without age or NEWT restriction, for Ron to begin training with the Aurors. He'd gotten the mail from the generic Ministry owl without even batting an eye, and had spit his coffee all over the table when he'd read it. The next day, he'd started training.

Then, they'd begun on the smaller favors. Harry had questioned Malfoy at least a hundred times about the money they were using and about the political favors he was wasting. Draco had merely leveled his gaze, and frowned.

"It's prejudiced blood money that I don't want, or deserve. As for the political influence, well… I've never minded people like that fearing me." And then the subject had been dropped. They worked well together, Harry discovered, and he and Draco had soon migrated to number 12 Grimmauld Place in order to conduct their business.

An internship at the Dragon Reserve where Charlie worked for Hagrid. A grey tabby for McGonagall, so she could patrol the halls of Hogwarts as both a human and a cat whenever she wished. A pygmy puff for George, because they were said to help cure depression. A thestral stables near the Hogwarts grounds for Luna, because there were hundreds of them now and they were drawn to the students who had lived through the war.

Some of the favors had been simple enough. For Neville, they'd procured and filed an application to a Herbology school in Italy, which he'd both accepted and loved. For Molly, Harry had found an artist to paint a lifesize portrait of Fred, as well as one of the whole Weasley family. For Arthur, Harry had went online and ordered a bulk package of over seven hundred rubber ducks.

It wasn't all bad. In between the larger favors, when Draco was avoiding his mom or when Ron and Hermione wanted to get away from the Burrow, they would gather in Grimmauld Place and drink butterbeer. They would laugh and reminisce for as long as the firelight allowed, and they would all fall asleep together on the large rug.

Often times, when Harry was working as a cashier in Muggle London or when he was alone for any long period of time, he would feel like that baby bird. He would convince himself that the first Killing Curse had been the human hands that had marked him as 'other'. With a bottle of firewhiskey, he could paint an entire sob story with that metaphor. They were, all of them, tainted by the touch of darkness now and they'd all been rejected, in their own ways. If not physically, then emotionally.

But, when the four of them sat on that rug and Hermione told them stories of triumph from within the Department of Magical Rights, or when Ron went through action by action replays of recovery and rescue cases he'd worked recently, Harry didn't feel quite so abandoned. When he and Draco sat together at the only table they'd managed to clean and plotted for the world that wouldn't listen to them, he didn't feel very helpless. And, when they watched those plans unfold, he sure as hell didn't feel like some dumb kid.

Sometimes, if Harry let himself, he would look at their little group once everyone else was asleep on the rug and the fire had died down. He would still see those abandoned baby birds if he looked at any of them individually. But, together, Harry just might have called them his flock.

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Thanks so much for reading! Reviews mean the world to me!


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